Violations of Natural Law in the Headlines:

Trampling Free will, Freedom to Contract and Freedom of Conscience (Freedom of Religion)

Under the NATURAL LAW tab at the head of this page, in Free Will: the First Principle of Natural Law, I explained that we all have a right to our free will. No one else can lay claim to it without violating our ownership of our will. It is through this undeniable individual ownership of our will that all other Natural Rights follow, and Universal Morality is established. Essentially, morality is a function of whether or not we violate another person’s free will. When we do so, we violate Natural Law. And when we force our will on another, it is tyranny. That is what this next story represents: government tyranny.

It is a state court decision that could have national reach. In the words of Red State’s Erik Erickson, “You will be made to care.”

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Christian wedding photographer violated the state’s human rights law by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.

Natural vs. Civil RightsIn examining this story, we must start by understanding that ‘human rights’ is merely another term for ‘civil rights.’ The term ‘human rights’ is intended to be an equivalent term to Natural Rights, but the two terms are not equivalent. Natural Rights rests on the existence of a Creator whereas human rights rest solely on the reason of man. Thus, though some may try to elevate it beyond the position, human rights are merely civil rights as they exist only as an act of legislation. But Natural Rights exist independently and in spite of man’s law. So we need to understand that human rights are always subordinate to Natural Rights.

The Natural Right to Contract The next thing we need to understand is that all business transactions are essentially the result of people exercising their Natural Right to contract. Civil/human rights cannot alter this Natural Right: they can only subvert and trample it. The Constitution rests on the same Natural Right. The Constitution is the result of a social contract between every citizen in this nation. If they seek to claim the protections established by the Constitution, they must also agree to live according to its restrictions. And if they reject those restrictions, they cannot claim its protections; rather, society has a right to direct the full force of those protections against those who reject the terms of the Constitution. In the same manner, wherever they would conflict with the protections of the Constitution, States cannot claim their own civil/human rights. To do so is a violation of the terms of the Social Contract that have been set above the authority of the States.

Now, let’s look at this story. First, the State of New Mexico has declared that its ‘human rights’ are superior to the protections of the U.S. Constitution. This is a violation of the Social Contract, thus it constitutes an attack on every American who still claims those protections – including the citizens of New Mexico. Second, there is no such thing as a Natural Right to not be discriminated against. Any attempt to prohibit discrimination requires that the government force its will on others. This is a clear violation of Natural Rights because it tramples the free will of the individual. Though we may find it disagreeable, so long as it does not physically or materially harm someone, we have a right to be bigots, or to discriminate. We also have a Natural Right to do business according to our biases. We do not have an individual right to force each other to do business with us, and we are not harmed because someone refuses to do so. We can do business with others or do without, but the absence of an action does not cause harm: personal or otherwise. Therefore, the State of New Mexico is not only violating the Constitution by forcing someone to do business against their will, it is violating Natural Law and this – by definition – is tyranny.

The same applies to forcing the State’s will over an individual’s objections of conscience. So long as our beliefs do not cause positive harm, any attempt to force us to do something against our conscience is a violation of our free will. Once again, the State of New Mexico is violating the Constitution and committing an act of tyranny.

Hence, this story is not about ‘gay rights.’ That is a false argument. This story is about a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution and an overt act of tyranny by the State of New Mexico – period! And any attempt to make this into anything other than a violation of the Constitution and act of tyranny is an attempt to deceive — a further violation of Natural Law.

Yes, but this is not about private property and individual rights: it is about forcing the will of a minority onto the majority via the use of the same government that is supposed to protect the will of that majority, as well. In short, this is turning the government against the majority to protect a minority and establish special rights. As such, it is a clear violation of Natural Law.

Hmm, yes, per maybe you’re right that most constituents isn’t extalcy the correct metric to use. It seemed a little better than most important issues (with requisite hand-waiving) because I really wanted to move it away from issues that are most important to me . I suppose it’s more like the weighted importance that I’m trying to capture, like the gravity of the issue multiplied by the number of people it impacts. This is what it seems like national news outlets should be focusing on. Local news outlets should similarly, in my mind, be focusing on the issues that have the biggest impact on their viewers.Maybe the part that you were focusing on was just written inadequately to express what I was really trying to get at, which I think centers around journalistic integrity in contrast to the newsertainment that gets served these days. As for the pressure coming from the blogosphere, I don’t think I agree. I mean, at least not theoretically. It might be the case that empirically, right now the blogosphere is applying the exact pressure that I want, but in many ways the blogosphere might be the opposite of what I’m advocating for. I’m saying that there are things which maybe should be covered by the media, even if they’re not sensational, or easy to understand, or invoke an emotional response, or contribute to a higher sales price of commercial slots; in short, there should be some things in the news that aren’t fun, and aren’t what people are going to be clamoring for. So in a world where everyone had a blog (which is certainly almost-possible now, and will be definitely-possible in the near future) I would expect the aggregate pressure exerted by bloggers to be equivalent to the aggregate pressure exerted by the current media-consuming public. Now it could be in that in the current moment, maybe some bloggers are doing a great job and are digging up good facts and stories and pressuring the major outlets to cover them as well, but I don’t think that’s an inherent or necessary quality of blogs , bloggers or blogging . We could be in a situation ten years from now, where you and I could both agree that bloggers are exerting pressure and that we both agree it’s a detrimental pressure (maybe the times have changed by then such that blogs are earning more commercial revenue than traditional news outlets and thus are more sensitive to corporate interests than today’s news).So if bloggers are exerting the right pressure at the moment, great. But as long as most people out there are going to a few consolidated sources for information about their community, their nation and the world in general, I would hope that there’s something set up inherent to that system which makes it as impartial as possible. There might have been a bit on the history of news commercialism in Outfoxed (please don’t take this as an endorsement for the film, which I remember thinking was horrible), or maybe it was a different documentary, but it talked about how at one point, by law if a show was news it had some special rules which governed it and wasn’t allowed to show commercials during the programming. It was all monitored through the FCC and there was a higher standard for what a station had to do to keep its broadcasting license, which was basically an annual check that it was still serving the public interest. This is all from a distant memory, so the facts could be wrong, but I don’t think they’re far off. And it’s not just commercialism of news that I’m taking issue with (although I think that’s a big deal), it’s more about the reduction of the national dialogue to issues that are divisive, but which don’t have a tremendous impact. From the freaking Republican National Debate: Mayor Giuliani, how after being a lifetime Yankees fan could you root for the Red Sox in the world series? **James closes agape mouth** These are the divisive issues which could very influence who the next leader of the free world is!!!! I’ll refrain from getting into my thoughts about the YouTube debates here, but I wish that there existed news professionals (because I, like most people, do not have time or ability to research exhaustive primary sources for everything that I have opinions about or want to know about) who had as part of their qualifications a predilection for impartiality and a desire to inform people about the things that would be impacting them.I hope I hit on more of what you were talking about. Let me know if I was way off the mark or misinterpreted something you said.As for choosing which issues are worth caring about and trying to defend that choice through reasoned arguments I’m all about the reasoned arguments, but I just want to stress that the criteria for determining what stories to cover is different in blogs than on the news. In blogs, since it’s a grassroots-every-person-has-an-equal-opinion kind of forum (which I think works great for some things), it seems acceptable for the bar to be lower (eg something of larger personal importance, but smaller general importance), but for major news outlets it should be higher. At least in my opinion.